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A Letter to Secretary of Defense Gates Re.: Lectures on Islam at Fort Hood

by THE EDITORS December 18, 2009

Editor’s note: The following letter to Robert Gates was received by FSM for publication.

17 December 2009

The Honorable Robert Gates

Secretary of Defense

The Pentagon

Washington, D.C.

Dear Secretary Gates:

It has come to our attention that the Department of Defense has invited Louay Safi, a top official at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), to give lectures on Islam to our troops at Fort Hood. If this is indeed true, we respectfully request that you end this practice.

According to the Justice Department, ISNA is a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with a network of known and suspected Islamic terrorist organizations spread throughout the world. The Brotherhood and its partner organizations regularly espouse violent jihad and anti-Semitism.

More specifically, ISNA was identified by the Justice Department at the successful Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing conspiracy trial as an unindicted co-conspirator. Literature distributed by ISNA at its annual convention in Washington in July featured books and pamphlets portraying prosecution of terrorist and terror-supporters as “anti-Muslim bigotry;” revisionist history that denied Arab and Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel; and anti-Semitic tracts.

Safi himself has been connected to an entity called the “Safa Group.” Search warrants executed in 2002 were supported by an affidavit alleging its involvement in moving large sums of money to terrorist fronts. He was also caught on a 1995 FBI wiretap of Sami al-Arian. Safi was concerned that an executive order, issued by President Clinton prohibiting financial transactions with terrorist organizations, would negatively affect al-Arian. In April 2006, al-Arian pled guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – a specially designated terrorist organization.

The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words to “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands.” What better way to carry out its plans to “sabotage” our efforts than to have one of its own invited to lecture on Islam to the very troops called to defend this country against those the Brotherhood supports. We ask that you immediately stop any lecturing by Louay Safi or ISNA affiliated speakers.

Sincerely,

W. Todd Akin Sue Myrick